Saturday, August 21, 2010

News Filter: Champions Online's August State of the Game

It's that time of the month again. And like the cycles of the moon, Champions Online has waxed in full, ready to show us this month's State of the Game. This month's update covers a number of topics, including a few new bits of info.

First, the Summer Update will be coming August 24. Now that the Pet Update has been stripped out, there isn't much else for them to worry over. The Summer Update page is available, giving a nice breakdown of the patch. Most of it is quality of life upgrades, like supergroup updates, new emotes, and new flyovers for the cutscenes. But they also have updated the Renaissance Center for better functionality. Plus it looks really nice. Funny enough, the thing I'm most looking forward to is the new costume options. Looks like Arcfire will be getting a daring new look.

Next, Cryptic reminds us that the games first anniversary is on the horizon. They mention various prizes they will be giving away, but also hint at more events to come. I just hope they have a good lore reason for dropping a huge cake in the middle of Ren Center. (Speaking of which, Guild Wars always has the best themed holidays, doesn't it?)

Third comes the reminder that The Demonflame adventure pack is on the horizon, set to launch at the end of September or beginning of October. There isn't a lot more info. Poz does explain that they've designed this pack based on feedback from The Serpent Lantern. But the big info is that Cryptic is also updating the Nemesis options with the pack. New nemesis powers and new henchmen options will help give even more variety. I'm looking forward to this pack since my main hero has a demonic backstory. (So yeah, I'm excited for RP reasons. Crazy.) I'm also impressed with the timeline on this. If they can keep rolling out patches and adventure packs quarterly, I'll be pretty happy.

Poz does take the time to rundown what's happening with the pet update again. It would be a nice addition to the adventure pack if they can get it down. He also sneaks in a mention that there will be some limited cosmetic options for pets available, something that wasn't even mentioned before the update got delayed. So a nice little treat for keeping us waiting.

Finally, they give us some longer term plans for the game. They want to update the Millennium City Westside zone so that it flows better and is more consistent. And they want to update Lemuria so that it's easier to adventure there. They also mention expanding the use of the difficult slider and instance scaling, which would be great. Not that I think it will happen, but I will do a little dance if instance scaling extends to lairs.

All in all, a great SotG from Cryptic. It's always great to see more Champions Online news. I'm excited for the future.

@ Yeebo - I found Jack Emmert's recent interview about Neverwinter really telling. He said that Champions and STO were released unpolished, just so that they could have a lot of game systems in place at launch. I'm amazed the games are as good as they are, but that also means it has taken months to get them up to the expected quality. So, yeah, someday they will be worth the price. :)